The first word spoken in “John Proctor Is the Villain” is “sex,” a portent of things to come. Mr. Smith (Gabriel Ebert), a high school English teacher, has been tasked with handling sex-ed for his junior honors students; this module mostly consists of the students reading aloud definitions of words including “sex” and of course “abstinence.” They are not receiving much sexual education here, and Mr. Smith is certainly not a good man for the job. But this is the only high school in a one-stoplight town in Appalachian Georgia, so he’ll have to do. His actual job is to teach his students “The Crucible,” a rite of passage for almost all American schoolchildren. He explains to his students how Arthur Miller used the Salem witch trials in 1692 as an allegory for McCarthyism; this play takes place in 2018 and to keep things topical for the kids, he relates it to ongoing conversations about “witch hunts,” including #MeToo.
But #MeToo is not merely a premise or backdrop. Playwright Kimberly Belflower has crafted a compelling rebuttal to “The Crucible” and the way it is most often read (as the title makes clear). She brings the play up to date, transforming Miller’s Red Scare allegory into one more suited to our current political climate. In the process, she makes “The Crucible” feel surprisingly fresh, especially as seen — and rejected — by the teenage girls in the class. Belflower also plays with the allegory, devising a metatheatrical work that adapts “The Crucible,” with various characters becoming stand-ins for Miller’s and similar beats revisited anew.
Beth (a tender and hilarious Fina Strazza) is our passionate yet unsure Mary Warren; the faithful but betrayed Raelynn (Amalia Yoo, subtle and sincere) acts as an adolescent Goody Proctor; and Shelby (Sadie Sink, of “Stranger Things”) is a Gen Z Abigail Williams. Here though, Shelby goes from a scandalously sexually-active girl to a survivor bent on no longer keeping silent.
It’s commendable that Sink has chosen to lend her star power and box office appeal to this play, which speaks to her politics, her maturity, and perhaps most importantly, her humility. Elsewhere on Broadway, big names from film and television star in vanity projects reviving Shakespeare, Mamet, and even their own film. Instead, Sink appears in an ensemble piece, and has helped boost a new, feminist play by a female playwright, in a production directed by a woman (Danya Taymor, director of “The Outsiders”) and featuring a majority-female creative team.
Sink gives a spellbinding performance as a girl who is deeply pained but shielded with thick armor: She’s smart but underestimated, and ready to harness her rage against the patriarchy. Sink is surrounded by a superb cast who work beautifully together. Belflower molds characters with notable depth, including the smaller roles like Atlanta transplant Nell (Morgan Scott) or the “male feminist” Mason (Nihan Duvvuri). The key mediator between the students and their teacher is Ms. Gallagher (Molly Griggs), a guidance counsellor who is fresh out of college and an alumna of this high school; Griggs artfully plays this liminal position, triumphantly asserting herself at a crucial time.
Several girls in class, led by Beth (with a large binder in tow), band together to form a feminism club, a proposal which is initially shot down by the administration until Mr. Smith agrees to sponsor and Mason is dragged in. As the students read “The Crucible” and hold club meetings, scandals are unearthed and #MeToo goes from a discussion topic to an increasingly close-to-home issue, testing the girls’ feminist stances.
Belflower effectively captures the way pop music is ingrained into the vernacular of these teenage girls, with lyrical references to Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Lizzo, and Lorde sprinkled throughout. For these characters, pop songs are the references at their fingertips, both for their introductory feminism and their expression of the many heightened emotions of adolescence. As is so often the case, when things get heavy, they turn to music. At the play’s climax, a pair of girls do an interpretive dance to a perfectly-selected pop song for a classroom project about “The Crucible” — their performance is heart-wrenching, guttural, cathartic, and one of the most powerful dramatic finales in recent memory.
In another memorable scene, Raelynn and Shelby skip school and hang out at a gas station. Their lifelong best-friendship has gone through a major rough patch, and in this touching scene they process trauma together. But what makes this so captivating is the singular accuracy with which it represents the unique way teenage girls talk to each other when they are alone: the shared language, the gestures, the inside jokes, the intimacy, the laughing so hard it hurts. Belflower’s writing, Taymor’s direction, and the performance of Sink and Yoo combine in gorgeous ways, creating something magical.
Taymor’s direction is impeccable throughout, but some of her best work is also her quietest, evidenced in many small details. The transitions between scenes are extraordinary works of art themselves. After each scene, an actress lingers and we are treated to an emotional epilogue, a silent soliloquy, where we see, for one more minute, what they are thinking and feeling. As this happens, eerie techno is pumped in by sound designer and composer Palmer Hefferan while Natasha Katz’s lights and Hannah Wasilkeski’s projections flicker, subtly highlighting details in the classroom in a horror-adjacent scenographic move. It’s an extremely effective maneuver, making a meal out of the logistical breath between scenes.
The play has several reveals which raise the stakes and maintain the play’s lightning speed, but they all are well earned. The classroom wall has posters about “lightbulb moments,” and many take this form, including when Shelby, ironically and fittingly, declares that John Proctor is actually the villain of “The Crucible.” This provokes dismay in Mr. Smith, who defends the character’s supposed heroism and morality, but Shelby’s revelation inspires several of the other girls in class. This play will likely forever change how you think about “The Crucible,” adding depth, layers, and a feminist reading that counters the way it is often taught in schools.
“John Proctor Is the Villain” is the best play of the season, but even more significantly, it is a feminist masterpiece sure to become one of the defining works of art from and about the #MeToo era. In a similar fashion to “The Great Gatsby” (also on Broadway) — another favorite of high schools, and also discussed in this play — Belflower astutely managed to capture a moment while it was still happening: the play is set in 2018, which is when Belflower first workshopped the piece. Despite this lack of temporal distance, Belflower nonetheless retains great clarity about the historical happenings of the #MeToo movement, including the complexities and messiness, the rapid spread of feminist fervor, the wrongdoings both large and small, the urgent imperative to (finally start to) believe women, and the sometimes scary speed of cancel culture.
The play asks the vital question of when a witch hunt becomes a witch hunt — but also invites us to ponder who gets declared a witch, who are the hunters, and who deserves to be hunted. “John Proctor Is the Villain” is a feminist reinvention, turning “The Crucible” on its head and demonstrating the power of feminine solidarity and rage — and right now, solidarity and rage sound like pretty good strategies for fighting back, or even just for coping. In many ways, this is a perfect play for our moment, an urgent response to a time of crisis and a battlecry in the face of a terrifying world. So let’s go dance in the woods, scream at the moon, burn it all down, and make something new and better, together.